Posting and searching for jobs is a time honored and laborious task. The most basic route for finding suitable job candidates has been the posting of advertisements in newspapers and magazines noting the availability of a certain position. Job seekers or “candidates” prepare resumes and submit them to various employers who are advertising for a particular job.
In certain cases employers have not wanted their identity to be revealed for fear of being inundated with resumes and telephone contacts. Instead they have chosen to have resumes sent to unmarked P.O. boxes where they can subsequently be reviewed without the potential of hundreds, if not thousands of telephone calls.
As the fields of recruitment and job placement have advanced, a second layer of job placement professionals have arisen. These placement agencies or “head hunters” have typically been used by businesses as a form of filter to receive and process resumes from job applicants. The placement agency serves multiple purposes. First an employer can hire a placement agency (“agencies”) to find a candidate (s) to fulfill job slots that are available at the company. The company specifies to the placement agency the type of individuals desired and the agency takes all necessary steps to advertise and recruit individuals to fill vacant slots. The agency receives a fee for these services, which may be substantial.
Candidates (job seekers) apply to agencies based upon advertisements run by the agencies or are interviewed by the agencies, and the most qualified candidates are sent on to the employer for the final interview process. This shields the employer from having to process hundreds of resumes as well as to field hundreds of telephone calls associated with the jobs that are available. There are limits to the success of agencies. For example, there are many thousands of publications in which an agency might advertise for a particular position. However certain agencies have limited budgets and thus may not be able to advertise broadly for a particular position. Where this occurs, the most capable candidate may not be informed of the availability of a particular position.
In order to enhance the probability that the best candidates will be found, many companies have taken to advertising their available positions via the Internet by posting available positions on their respective web sites. Anyone who subscribes to the Internet is able to search for particular companies who have technology and market focus of interest and determine if there are any jobs available by viewing the web site of the particular company.
However the same difficulties that exist in the print media arise for a company when it is posting openings on a web site. Individual candidates (as used here the term “candidate” is synonymous can submit resumes via the Internet or other contact methods. Sorting and follow up associated with the many resumes that are received are the responsibility of the company. Again this task may not be desired to be taken on by the company that must then hire appropriate individuals to screen resumes and interview candidates. Thus the task of the employment agency is still a valuable one.
An additional difficulty with the Internet posting approach by an individual company is that not all web searching engines are created equal. Hence there is a possibility that qualified candidates will not become aware that there are particular job postings available on a particular company's web site. Further the candidate may not even be aware that a particular company exists if the search engine being used by the applicant does not pick up the web site of the company.
Recognizing this job searching dilemma, a new business was born on the web, that is, the “career bulletin board”. A career bulletin board is a centralized web site that allows individual companies to post job openings in one central location. Such a career bulletin board may have many hundreds or thousands of companies posting job openings with a wide variety of descriptions of the type of opening, salary, requirements, and the like. Job candidates access the career bulletin board and perform key word searching to find the type of job in which they might be interested.
Conversely, individual candidates can post their resumes in a central file on the career bulletin board. That central file can then be searched by employers who typically pay a fee to the career bulletin board for the right to search resumes that are stored therein. The individual candidate can then be contacted by the companies that are subscribers to the career bulletin board.
Typically career bulletin boards do not charge candidates for access to company posted job listings nor are candidates charged for the right to post their resumes on the career bulletin board.
Companies typically are charged for the right to post a certain number of job openings for a period of time as well as are charged for access to the database of candidates' resumes. In this fashion the career bulletin board generates revenue.
It is also quite typical of such career bulletin boards that placement agencies are not permitted to interact with either the companies or the candidates since there is typically a hefty fee charged by placement agencies for their services. Hence many job bulletin boards do not solicit nor will they entertain participation of placement agencies.
Placement agencies however have been imaginative in how they deal with career bulletin boards. For example in order to circumvent the “no agency” policy of career bulletin boards, a placement agency will post a fictitious resume giving contact information for the fictitious applicant as that of the placement agency. When an employer finds the resume to be attractive and contacts the candidate at the contact information, the company is connected to the placement agency that can then potentially field a candidate at the placement agencies usual and customary fees.
Obviously this type of fraudulent participation is frowned upon by the career bulletin boards but is not easily curtailed. Further, if placement agencies are searching for a particular type of candidate, the placement agency can sign onto the career bulletin board as a fictitious company having a particular opening. When an individual job seeker applies for that opening, the job seeker is connected to the placement agency which when performs the usual and customary screening and introductory tasks on behalf of an employer.
Recognizing that placement agencies do have something to offer in the job seeking and placement process, the present invention is designed to assist in bringing placement agencies, employers (companies), and candidates together in an effective fashion. Therefore what would be particularly useful is a system and method for bringing together placement agencies, candidates, and employers (companies or corporate recruiters) in a coherent fashion that maximizes the availability of jobs to the candidate, generates continuing revenue to the career bulletin board, and allows the placement agency an opportunity to field candidates to employers and to seek qualified candidates for employment positions for which the placement agency is responsible.